09.01.2019

SERVICE SUMMARY: Do you ever feel like you don’t measure up? Maybe if you work a little harder, exercise a little more, eat a little healthier, get up a little earlier, or find something else to “do” you could get there. But finite creatures have limits, and we will inevitably come to our own limits with more to do and most likely a persistent feeling of not being enough. What if you’re already enough? How would that change your work and rest? Join us this Sunday as we look at Abiding in the Sabbath Rest of Christ.

REFLECTIONS:

The Ten Commandments help the liberated from falling back into the bad moral habits of slaves, and thus help a free people remain faithful to the logic of their liberation.

―Réme Brague

A great benefit of Sabbath keeping is that we learn to let God take care of us — not by becoming passive & lazy, but in the freedom of giving up our feeble attempts to be God in our own lives.

—Marva Dawn

SCRIPTURE:

2 Peter 1:3-8 NIV

His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Deuteronomy 5:12–15

“‘Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.

CONFESSION OF SIN

Gracious God,

our sins are too heavy to carry, too real to hide, and too deep to undo. Forgive what our lips tremble to name, what our hearts can no longer bear, and what has become for us a consuming fire of judgment. Set us free from a past that we cannot change; open to us a future in which we can be changed; and grant us grace to grow more and more in your likeness and image, through Jesus Christ, the light of the world. Amen.

SONG TO CONSIDER
&lt;a href=”http://theportersgate.bandcamp.com/album/work-songs”&gt;Work Songs by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project&lt;/a&gt;

VERSE 1:
We are the vineyard You have planted
Tend our leaves and wild branches:
we abide, we abide in You.
We abide, we abide in You.

VERSE 2:
Fruit growing from our strength and labor,
rain on us with grace and favor:
we abide, we abide in You.
We abide, we abide in You.

REFRAIN:
Where can my soul find living water?
Apart from You we bear no fruit!
O plant my feet down by the river:
we abide, we abide in You.